Classic Style

    The proverbial overflowing hamper of dirty laundry, which seems to be the look many men of various ages strive for actively in 2020.  I maintain they just don't know any better. W hether you are lucky enough to be able to work from home via online applications like Zoom, Teams, Monday.com, etc., or you are back in the office wearing a mask and social distancing, do everything in your power to avoid looking like an overstuffed lawn & leaf bag with legs.  How you present yourself to the world counts, guys. Business casual does not mean turning up for work in anything resembling pajamas, t-shirts with ironic sayings, sweatpants, cargo shorts, or anything with wrinkles, rips, tears, food, or grease stains.  Unless you intend to resemble a terminally 30-year old cafe barista with a five-day growth forever working your way part-time through some kind of indeterminate masters degree program that people still don't understand even after hearing you explain it five times in as

    F riday evening, The Grand Duchess and I enjoyed the change in temperature by sitting out on the screened back porch until quite late in the evening talking about this and that.  Covid-19, its effect on U.S. society, our government's woeful lack of response to the ongoing public crisis, our state's response, our university's response, the general quality of the students, what the scholarship of teaching and learning can or should do to reach the mean while maintaining a fairly high level or academic rigor, etc.  While I could not articulate it very well at the time, the following thought has gradually clarified itself during the last few days.  So, here goes.   We can clamor all we want for the coveted "change," but perhaps we should take a more grass roots approach that's a bit closer to home?  Maybe, just maybe, if we want a change in outcomes, whatever the issue under scrutiny might be, we ought to be much more willing to examine, reevaluate, and change

  Not my photograph, but it conveys the subject of today's post.   W hen I was out for my usual evening walk post-bedtime for The Young Master on Thursday, I saw overhead not one but three separate V's of Canada Geese!  The time was just after 9m, and they were flying into the stunning peach sunset in the west-southwest.  We always start to see such large flocks about this time each summer once again, presumably starting to make their trek south after summering and having new families here in mid-Michigan or points further north.  All told, I'd estimate the total number of geese in the three formations to be about 120 or so.  Fowl (ahem) tempered birds, but beautiful to observe in flight. -- Heinz-Ulrich